Lethal .380

[Flopsy]

.380 is only a 70 grain bullet

My Golden Sabers are 102 grains.

 

[The Tourist]

By the way Corto applies for...Italian.

My Aunt Clara agrees. LOL.

However, isn't this part of any debate? After all, this cartridge is really a .355 ACP. A .38 SPL is actually a .357 SPL. A .223 is actually a .224. You can buy .308 bullets for reloading that actually mic at .311 or .312 for the Kalashnikov market. Semantically, I never owned a 'switchblade.' Mine never had a 'switch,' it was more of a button...

And fifty years ago, a .380 ACP might not have been a good idea. It wasn't until Super-Vel gave us insight into making cartridges push their limits. You might not have a ballistic pendulum flying off its hinges, but our modern day hollowpoint construction makes the cartridge lethal, indeed.

With good shot placement, I believe the same argument might be true for a SilverTip hollowpoint for a .32 ACP.

 

[Aceoky]

My Golden Sabers are 102 grains

As are my cast lead round nose bullets for the .380 102 grains

 

[Cron]

Are we really concerned with lethality? I'd think stopping power is more important. If a BG threatens my life my first concern is to stop him from doing what he's doing. A .380 will certainly kill, but how quickly if bullet placement is not precise.
I own .380, 9mm and .357. The .357 is always within my reach. Bullet placement is paramount but under stress it ain't so easy.

 

[The Tourist]

think stopping power

Obviously you are right.

However, as serious shooters we all know the disclaimers.

For example, we all know that we cannot brandish, we must be trying to stop a credible attack on ourselves or those in our care, we would have trouble fleeing, we had to be sure of our backstop, it must be of reasonable distances, etc.

I think we condense these factors down to just saying "a shooting situation." We know what the poster meant.

Additionally, when we say "lethal," we mean "fight stopper." Will the cartridge in question stop the fight and put the aggressor on his back.

This is the crux of the experiments after the Miami FBI shooting. The felon was in the act of dying, but still upright for more than 90 seconds and he was firing back.

 

[Fer]

I carry a 851SS because it is staineless steel mostly and it is also small, but after reading this thread I will go home and switch with my BDA.380

 

[Fer]

I was checking out some ammo vendors and one of them had Aguila 95gr, the specs where 900+ feet/sec and 220 energy, this is supposed to be good correct? it was full metal jacket, but at these specs it is faster and transfers more energy than the "standard" .380 specs correct? could it be considered a hot round? Do any of you have any info on this ammo? Please advise.

 

[Fer]

Here is the link.

http://www.the-armory.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/aguila.html

Sorry, it is 945 feet per sec and 188 energy. I think I got confused with some corbon specs. Still what is your experience with aguila.

Thank you,

 

[Black Majik]

I'm going to bet that stupid answers such as this is the reason for the question.

Going by the outlook of the pistol forums, the .380 is starting to become pretty popular. And you still have people like this who answer caliber questions with assnine responce like this.

Look at each and every .380 post in the last year and there is at least one stupid reply just like the one I quoted.

My whole post was completely tongue-in-cheek. I apologize if it's construed otherwise. I really don't mind carrying a .380, but as others have stated there are many pistols out that are the same size as a standard .380 pistol chambered in larger calibers.

Whether it's .380, 9mm, .22 or .45 it's all about shot placement anyways right?

 

[kentucky bucky]

Are you 10 feet tall and bullet proof, or is this a trick question?

 

[ARTiger]

I like the .380 round and many of the pistols it's chambered in. That said, if it's possible to carry a larger caliber please do.

While the chances of someone living through a properly placed .380 hit are not good, the chance of them taking a hit and being able to shoot back (if armed) are more than I would care to chance. They probably will end up dead. I'd prefer not to accompany them.

Clothing choices are secondary to carrying the biggest caliber I can possibly hide well and maintain some semblence of comfort.

Summer in my part of the south is as uncomfortable as anyplace on the globe and I find a way to at least have a very shootable 9mm or .38 +p on my person most all times.

Realizing that many folks aren't so committed, I would advise carrying whatever you can and the largest caliber possible. If that's .380 or even .32 ACP versus not carrying at all you are much better off.

Human nature I guess is to look for the easiest way to get by. Our concealed weapon is something that 99.99% of us will never need to draw for serious purposes. Many will CCW their entire adult lives and never need it. If properly considered, drawing your weapon means someone or something is about to take your life and you need to stop that. Personally, I'd take a .380 versus a sharp stick, but would rather have a .357 or .45.

 

[ldp4570]

.380acp/.32acp

I have several guns in different calibers to choose from, and my first personal handgun was a BDA380. I still find this a very capable carry weapon. I just recently purchased a Beretta 85FS, and it has replaced the BDA380 as a carry gun due in part to the thinner grip frame. There are times when my CCW must be extreamly low profile, I then strap on a Walther PPK in .32ACP. I have never felt outgunned or undergunned with the latter. One its about situational awareness, and understanding the capabilities of the weapon at hand, and last but not least proper bullet placement.

One other thing, regardless of which firearms your taking to the range to play with, always take your primary CCW along and practice, practice, practice. Just like with unarmed combatives training, if you don't practice, it won't work when you need it to.

 

[Fer]

How about a reply to the aguila question, or it is not comercialized in the states?

 

[Fer]

Guess not

 

[CA2005]

Lack of experience or not...this is an idiotic question.

 

[Comanche180]

small bore

A lot of the time I have carried a .32 cal pistol, but since I practice a lot, I am confident of placement. The .32s I own have 7 to 10 rounds in the mag so I can make a lot of holes if necessary. I also at times carry a .380ACP or a 9mm. I never carry a .45ACP in spite of the "stopping power", mine are just to big for me to carry. I am comfortable with the penetrating power of the lesser calibers, I probably don't watch enough movies.

 

[The Tourist]

My whole post was completely tongue-in-cheek.

There's where we disagree. A forum should be about discussion. And we shouldn't be smug about assuming everyone knows as much about a topic as some of us insiders. I answer questions all day long about average topics clients could easily glean from Blade magazine. Not everybody reads Blade.

Additionally, while I agree with probably +75% of the "conventional wisdom" I see here, some of it will draw my objection simply because I have personally seen evidence to the contrary.

In fact, if we were having this discussion in the 1970's, I might even post that a .380 was a lousy cartridge for self defense. We didn't have any of the newer advancements in bullets like Gold-Dots, Golden Sabers or Cor-Bon.

And let's face it, real men were a lot tougher then. Shooting them with a .355 slug would have just made them mad.

As I have said before, I know nothing about shotguns. I have only owned one of them. In all honesty, I don't know why some shotguns have rifled barrels--but if I said that to some people here, I'd get laughed off the forum.

And the laughing would probably be done by the same people who know nothing about knives.

Personally, this subject on the .380 has been one of our best threads. More and more people are carrying CCW and discussion on calibers is essential. I've learned many facts/opinions in this thread.

 

[Soybomb]

I read somewhere that .22's account for a large percentage of firearm deaths, so a .380 is at least as lethal I would think.

This illustrates why you may hear bad things about the .380. .22 shorts can be lethal but people don't consider them powerful enough to do enough damage to stop an attacker quickly. Dead in the hospital 24 hours later isn't what we're hoping for. .380 seems to be about the same. A .38 special provides a significant increase in capacity to damage tissue reliably.

'd like to say just one thing about the penetration issue, if you can actually call it an issue.

Put your hand on your chest, thaaaat's right, right over the center. Feel that rhythmic thumping? We call that your "heart". On a person of average height and weight that heart thing is about three inches back from where your hand is right now. Even if a guy is as big as me, 6' 3" and 255 lbs, the heart is still no more than about four inches back.

Now, I'll agree that the heart is surrounded by a tough fibrous sack called the pericardium, but that ain't made of Kevlar and the bone in front of it, the sternum, isn't plate steel!

Do attackers often present their heart as an easy to hit target? The entire reason the 12+" thing came about was too many failure to stops from this older view. The reality is attackers stand at angles, hold weapons in front of their bodies meaning you have to shoot through arms, and bullets don't always wind up taking a straight path.

Using your logic any bullet that does over what, 6-8" of penetration would exit the body in many shootings? This isn't the way it works. There was a study in the 1991 Wound Ballistics Review Jounal by Eugene Wolberg where he checked out the real world performance of 28 shots of the 147 gr winchester load in those shot by the san diego pd. This load does something like 14" in gelatin off the top of my head. The average length of the wound path was 13.2" Two rounds had penetrated to 13.5-14.5" and were stopped just under the skin. Wolberg speculated that they could have penetrated more deeply but that the skin has a "holding in" effect. For as many times as I've read people say "12 inches is excessive penetration" i think its quite telling that out of 28 wounds the average is so high. The most shallow wound was 10", and the deepest was 17" Neither of those two were about to exit the body. If penetration were as easy as taking a ruler to the side of the body and going "yup, 5 inches should do it", I think we would have seen different results of how the bullets actually behave in the body.

 

[neviander]

If it's good enough for Trinity, it's good enough for me.

(Beretta Cheetah pictured above)

 

[krs]

I think that this entire thread is just a way for people who find it inconvenient to carry large handguns to feel better about their puny preferences.

There's another thread about lethality of the .22 lr that's more obviously in the same vein as this one.

Being shot will not necessarily stop a person's ability to continue to act, or to walk, run, or fire a gun. Sure the lucky "shot placement" could do that, and so could a brick that fell from a passing truck - so what? Without a traumatic SHOCK a person intent on survival will be able to take the wound, if he even notice the wounding, and keep on trucking.

By shock I mean the sort of impact felt if a person were whumped right in his solar plexus with a full swung baseball bat. Can't you see that something like that would serve to stop action? Haven't any of you ever felt such a traumatic impact?

You want to go "bang" and have the bad guy play dead.

I submit that the only concealed carryable pistol cartridge that will cause such a shock, even if the recipient is hit solidly in his shoulder, his hip, even his arm is the .45 acp with 230 gr bullets.

All of this is just a bunch of people without a clue about shooting people or being shot telling each other "There there, your little gun will be enough. Why, you could even use a littler one so long as you be sure to use to frumped up so called modern magic bullets.

 

[The Tourist]

feel better about their puny preferences.

I weigh 273 pounds. As a bill collector, I used to pack a Series 70, nickel plated Colt .45 ACP in what was known at that time as a Jackass Rig. I believe now it's call some form of Galco product or even The Miami Vice rig.

To balance the weight, I also carried three, fully loaded nickel plated magazines under the other arm.

I am big enough to lug all that metal with a light summer sport coat. Do you know anyone that manages to wear that for very long? I'm lucky that particular job only lasted two years.

And that's the point. It's not comfortable, and since my next job was only plant security instead of deadbeat townies, I flat out didn't need that much.

I started with a Colt Officers ACP and worked my way down.

However, most people are not looking for offensive weapons, but defensive weapons. Their goal is to back up and flee from trouble, not actively engage it.

 

[Car Knocker]

I submit that the only concealed carryable pistol cartridge that will cause such a shock, even if the recipient is hit solidly in his shoulder, his hip, even his arm is the .45 acp with 230 gr bullets.

Thanks for the humor! I needed that today.

By the way, I pocket-carry a .45ACP much of the time.

 

[Okiecruffler]

At one time I had this weird love affair with the .380, actually had 13 different flavors to shoot it out of. Never felt terribly undergunned because I could provide pretty quick follow-up shots. But I've since then seen the light and carry a 45acp with 230gr bullets because if it so much as grazes the tip of a finger the shock is so severe that the top of the targets head will fly off.

Actually I started carrying the 45 because I like it and it's easier to reload for. There is no, and I mean NO pistol round (well, okay maybe the 500SW) that I would think of as an instant stopper. Arsenic kills, but I wouldn't want to hand a poisoned cup of tea to the attacker and wait around.
Stopping an attacker with a pistol has always been about shot placement. If you can do it good and fast everytime with a 380 that'll beat someone who can do it everynow and then mostly with a 45. Secret is the same way you get to Carnagie Hall.

AFWIW, the only real answer is Chuck Norris.

 

[Flopsy]

"I think that this entire thread is just a way for people who find it inconvenient to carry large handguns to feel better about their puny preferences."

Well, I submit that your entire post is just a way for you to feel better about your own preference.

There, balance is restored to the force.

 

[The Tourist]

your entire post...feel better...There, balance is restored to the force.

C'mon, let's not be too hard on the lad.

Personally, I also disagree with him. But it is a valid point of view.

I have friends my age (mid fifties) who do not understand that while I can buy any knife on the planet I choose one with a 1.5 inch blade.

I do not know where he lives. Perhaps his area is rife with gang bangers and drug addicts. If that is the case, I'd probably tote a .45 or a .40 with some very sophisticated hollowpoints to punch through the haze of their PCP state of mind.

Perhaps he only owns one gun, and it has to do everything. A .45 in a 1911 format is probably a good start.

I simply have a few handguns, and I just pick my choice. As I have stated, I am not a soldier, or a cop, or a mercenary. A .380 ACP and quality ammunition suits my lifestyle.